Internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photo: UNICEF/Arlette Bashizi
Palestinians and Congolese both find themselves victims of a genocide that they did not commit and that did not take place on their territory.
After October 7, 2023, as Israel began bombing Gaza and the world reacted in horror, a question murmured through the anti-war, anti-imperial left. Why not the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Why have the horrors in DRC gone on for so many years, with millions dead and millions displaced by the same decades-long conflict, but without a similar response?
Since then the UN Group of Experts’ have reported that Rwandan troops inside the borders of DRC outnumber those of Rwanda’s M23 militia, which masquerades as Congolese. The report also concluded that Uganda backs M23.
I spoke to Congolese journalist Akilimali Saleh Chomachoma, who likens the situations of Palestinians and Congolese. He is based in Goma, the capital of Congo’s North Kivu Province, where he grew up, at the heart of the conflict in eastern DRC. He began his career ten years ago in local radio, then migrated to international online media. He has written for Agrimine RDC, Global Issues, Minority Africa, and Toward Freedom. His Zenger News reporting on the auction of oil and gas blocks in DRC has been republished in Newsweek. He is also a correspondent for Washington DC-based Friends of the Congo.
ANN GARRISON: Do Congolese feel solidarity with the Palestinian people?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: The Congolese people feel great solidarity with the Palestinian people. The Congolese really feel in the same situation. They understand what is happening to the Palestinians because what they experience is so similar. Many prominent social figures are talking about the similarity between Palestine and DRC.
ANN GARRISON: Are these journalists and intellectuals, or other Congolese as well?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: Most prominently it's journalists, editorialists, and intellectuals who say this, but if you analyze the opinions, particularly on social networks, you'll see that others are in solidarity with the Palestinian people. However, the Congolese government has always refrained from commenting on this issue.
ANN GARRISON: Israel and Rwanda have been very close and mutually supportive for the past 25 years, constantly reinforcing each other’s victims’ narratives to justify their aggression in Palestine and DRC. Israel’s leaders say that the Holocaust justifies their war against the Palestinians while Rwanda says that the Rwandan Genocide justifies their war in DRC. Could you talk about that?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: Congolese, like the Palestinians, find themselves victims of a genocide that they did not commit, and that did not take place on their territory. They are suffering for a war in which they had no part.
Rwanda uses the deceitful strategy of searching for Rwandan genocidaires in DRC to perpetrate horrific mass violence here. The Congolese people had nothing to do with the Rwandan Genocide, but Rwanda uses it as an excuse to commit genocide here.
ANN GARRISON: Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame denies that Rwandans are in DRC while at the same time claiming that they’re there to protect the Congolese Tutsis and the related Banyamulenge people. Do you believe that Rwanda and its M23 militia are protecting them?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: First, it is no longer debatable. Rwanda and Uganda are not just behind the M23. They are the M23. Rwanda has said they’re here to protect the Congolese Tutsis and the Banyamulenge, but this is a false pretext for attacks on the Congolese and the seizure of territory and resources, most of all mineral resources.
ANN GARRISON: Since 2012, the UN Group of Experts have documented that M23 is a Rwandan and Ugandan militia, but especially Rwandan. In their 2014 report they “confirmed that M23 received various forms of support from Rwandan territory, including recruitment, troop reinforcement, ammunition deliveries and fire support.”
The evidence that M23 is a Rwandan militia is so abundant that I could write thousands of words just citing it here, but Rwanda continues to deny it, and Western journalists have felt compelled to add Rwanda’s denial to their reports for over a decade. Does anyone there in eastern Congo doubt that M23 is a Rwandan militia?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: No, not at all. In Congo, everyone agrees that the M23 is purely and simply a Rwandan creation. The Congolese who are part of it are mostly civilians who have been manipulated for their own selfish ends.
What is astonishing in DRC is the fact that, despite all the evidence of what Rwanda is doing here, political and financial support for Rwanda is coming from countries around the world. It's astounding how the world can turn a blind eye and deaf ear to what Rwanda is doing in DRC.
ANN GARRISON: UN sources now report that there are up to 4000 Rwandan troops in DRC, outnumbering and fighting alongside M23, who are roughly 3000, and in February, the US acknowledged that there are Rwandan troops inside the country. Isn’t this an outright, in-your-face violation of Congolese sovereignty?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: There are no other words for it. It is a violation, pure and simple, of the sovereignty of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Part of our territory is now under the control of a foreign army.
AG: According to the World Bank, Rwanda’s central government expense is 74.2% donor funded. The World Bank is the top donor, and the US is the top bilateral donor. The UK, Germany, France, and Japan are also among the top donors, and Qatar has become a major investment partner. Could you comment on that?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: Many African countries now depend on donors, but these donors keep ignoring what Rwanda is doing in Congo and funding Rwanda nevertheless. They know that this is one of the causes of the millions of deaths in the DRC, one of the reasons more than 7 million people have been forced to leave their homes and live on the move. These donor countries know that what they’re doing is wrong but they keep doing it anyway.
ANN GARRISON: In February, the EU signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Rwanda to, it said, “nurture sustainable and resilient value chains for critical raw materials.” How did Congolese people react to that, given Rwanda’s long, well-documented history of smuggling Congolese minerals out to the world through Rwanda?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: That agreement is a slap in the face to Congolese people.
ANN GARRISON: The Rwandan army and M23 are reported to be equipped with advanced weaponry, far beyond the Congolese army’s, but it’s not clear where these advanced weapons are coming from. What are your thoughts about that?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: None of these weapons are manufactured in Africa. Rwanda can afford to buy them with all the resource wealth they steal from Congo, and they may have obtained some of them by participating in AFRICOM, the US Africa Command. It’s also possible that these are arms Rwanda has received to wage the proxy wars it fights for the West on the African continent, like in Mozambique, where it has been defending the interests of France’s TOTAL Energies.
ANN GARRISON: An article in Foreign Policy said that, “A comparison to Israel could be drawn here, which despite being considerably smaller than most states in the Middle East, is renowned for its armed forces.”
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: That sounds right. The Rwandan army is well-trained, armed, and disciplined. Its service to the West in Africa is no doubt one of the reasons Western nations continue to turn a blind eye to its crimes in Congo and continue to fund Rwanda.
ANN GARRISON: In May Rwandan Defense Forces and M23 bombed an Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp, as Israel has in Gaza, and then denied it, although even their ally the US said they had done it. First estimates were that nine had been killed and at least 33 wounded, but by May 10 two camps had been bombed and the death toll had risen to 35.
In March 2024, ReliefWeb estimated the IDP population to be 7.2 million and it keeps growing. How are these people surviving?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: They live in terrible conditions. Most have little access to water, especially clean drinking water, health care, or shelter. It’s so bad that some are dying in the camps. Most of the millions of Congolese who have died since Rwanda and Uganda invaded in the 1990s have died of displacement and resulting hardship, hunger, and disease. Here in Goma, some of them beg in the streets to survive. Others do manual work in exchange for food and other necessities, while still others, women, are forced to work as prostitutes. It is all very difficult for them.
ANN GARRISON: M23 emerged in 2011, but isn’t it a Rwandan force that has simply changed its name over and over for decades?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: Yes. If you follow this, you can see that officers in one Rwandan militia become officers in the next. Every time Rwanda wants to wage war on the DRC, it creates a new so-called rebellion with the same people and changes the name and acronym. First there was the AFDL, then the RCD, then the CNDP, and now M23. M23 are just another variant of the Rwandan army's presence in the DRC.
ANN GARRISON: Are M23 and Rwandan troops in both North and South Kivu Provinces?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: They are present only in North Kivu province, but they have tried to extend their presence to South Kivu.
ANN GARRISON: It’s commonly reported that in territory occupied by Rwanda, Congolese people work in artisanal mines almost like slaves, for the most meager wages, digging for gold, tungsten, tin, and tantalum. Is that what you understand to be true?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: It's very difficult to get information from the zones occupied by Rwandan forces and M23 because access is so difficult, but it's clear that they exploit local labor in the mines. The minerals are then sent to Rwanda via the common borders, which are under Rwanda and M23’s control.
ANN GARRISON: Where do you think this is headed? Every few days we seem to hear that Rwanda has seized more territory, and it seems to have had Goma surrounded since March, as they did in 2012. What will happen if it seizes all or most of North Kivu Province, and possibly even South Kivu?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: I can't predict what's going to happen, but it's certain that Rwanda, with both M23 and its own soldiers, is taking more and more territory, and we don't know when it's going to stop.
ANN GARRISON: Some say that Rwanda is ultimately determined to drive the Congolese out of the Kivu Provinces and make them part of Rwanda, like Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. Do you think that’s the case?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: For the time being, it's difficult to get precise details. But it's clear that ideas of balkanizing the DRC are being nurtured by Rwanda, Uganda, and several Western countries. However, the Congolese people, in all their diversity, have been determined to live together as one nation, and that has always defeated this project.
ANN GARRISON: What would you most like the world outside DRC to understand about the situation there?
AKILIMALI CHOMACHOMA: They need to understand that the DRC is first and foremost a victim of those seeking to control its vast resources. Congo is arguably the most resource-rich nation on earth, so rich that it’s been called a “geological scandal.” This has been true since Belgium’s King Leopold colonized the Congo, after the Berlin Conference in 1885.
For the past three decades, Rwanda and Uganda have waged the most recent phase of this war for Congo’s resources, and it has claimed millions of Congolese lives. It is certainly one of the worst wars in terms of the levels of violence and the number of victims, especially civilians. Most of all the Congolese people want peace.
Akilimali Chomachoma is a Goma-based independent journalist who reports from Central Africa. He covers business, politics, health, social justice, and climate change.
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